The foundation of the church is Jesus Christ, who is both fully God and fully man. It traces the historical controversies surrounding Christ's identity, from Arius's denial of his eternal pre-existence to Apollinarius's undermining of his humanity and Nestorius's division of his person, highlighting how church councils like Nicaea and Chalcedon reaffirmed his deity, humanity, and single personality based on Scripture. The core lesson emphasizes that while Christ's full nature is a mystery, his deity and humanity are essential to the gospel message. The sermon concludes by urging believers to hold fast to this foundational truth and to boldly proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified, just as Paul did in Corinth, to lay foundations for others.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.09 → restored 4.35
Last evening we followed the Apostle Paul when he moved out of Asia and went to Philippi, where he saw real blessing and then experienced very severe persecution, which no doubt left his body scarred. He went on to Thessalonica, saw greater blessing and then the threat of persecution again, which forced him on to Berea, where once more he saw blessing and then the threat of greater persecution, and finally he was taken down to the great city of Athens and left alone. There was not much blessing in Athens, there was a great deal of mockery and indifference.
And Paul left, I think, somewhat discouraged, weak with a certain amount of fear and trembling, and he arrived at this perverse city of Corinth. And there he began in the synagogue and on street corners and in different ways to persuade Jews and non-Jews that Jesus was the Savior sent by God. And he tells us, and we're going to read once more tonight in First Corinthians chapter three, First Corinthians chapter three, that in this way of public and personal witness in the city of Corinth, he laid the foundation of the church.
First Corinthians three in verse ten, According to the grace of God which was given to me, as the wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it, but let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now the simplicity of the language is beautiful, and as we read it tonight, we would probably naturally think there really can't be any problem when you come to these words and you try and understand them.
It isn't a great doctrinal statement. He simply tells us, I have laid the foundation. No other foundation can be laid than that which is laid. And then he tells us what the foundation is. And he says simply, which is Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as it may appear on the surface. One of the great issues that shook the church to its foundations in the third and fourth centuries had to do precisely with the subject of who Jesus Christ really is.
There was a man in Alexandria in Egypt by the name of Arius. He was a brilliant man. He was a presbyter in the church. And it was a very active, dynamic church, a great center of Christian learning. in alexandria in the fourth century and this man in his teaching and writing ministry one day used the phrase referring to jesus christ as the word he wrote once the word was not now you may remember the words of john one and one in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was gone.
Now Arius, referring to the word, wrote once the word was not. The bishop of the church in Alexandria that time, his name was Alexander, he was a good man, but he was not successful in quelling this new thought which began to move all through the Christian circles around the Mediterranean Sea. And people began to follow Arius and his teaching. And the main thought was, the word had a beginning. Once the word was not. Even the emperor became involved in this great controversy.
And it was Constantine, the Roman emperor, that convened a meeting of the church leaders in Nicaea. If I remember rightly, it was in the year three hundred and twenty-five. and leaders came from all over the old world. They came from as far away as Persian, we call it Iran today, and from Spain, and they met in that place. And the issue was, is Arius right or wrong? If you're familiar with church history, the name that springs out of that council is the name of Athanasius. He was just a deacon in the church in Alexandria. but he was a very capable Bible student, and he was the bishop's right-hand man.
And most of the notes that Alexander the bishop used in that great conference were written out by Athanasius, and he is referred to as the champion of Christology in that century. He did not create what we call the doctrine of the deity of Christ, He and others went back to the teachings of the Lord Jesus. They went back to the writings of the apostles, and they reaffirmed that Arius was wrong, that when you come to the teachings of Jesus and the apostle, the Word did not have a beginning.
There was a great creed, came out of that council. And in that creed you have the famous words in connection with the Lord Jesus, very God of very God. Arianism did not disappear overnight. It lingered for a long time, for a number of centuries. And there were those who persisted that the Lord Jesus had a beginning. You can understand that. then when you come to a portion like this and Paul says this foundation is Jesus Christ men have different opinions about who the Lord Jesus really is not long after the times of the Nicaea Council there was a man in Asia by the name of Apollinarius he was a good man he defended strongly the deity of the Lord Jesus so strongly that he weakened his authentic humanity and he came to the conclusion that the Lord Jesus only took a human body and that the place in the human being that
is occupied by the spirit and the soul that part in the Lord Jesus was occupied by the eternal Son of God now it's a great mystery for most of us but you can understand I'm sure in a very simple way that if the Lord Jesus only took a human body then he was not an authentic human being in the writings of John and in the writings of Paul they both will use the word flesh it is used sometimes in different ways but when Paul says great is the mystery of godliness God was manifest in the flesh.
The word flesh takes in all that a human being really is. And when John says in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh. Again, the word flesh takes in all that a human being is. So another great counsel of the church was convened. And as they went back again to the Bible, to the teachings of the Lord Jesus and the apostles, and I paused to grant, there were many signs of weakness in these meetings. There were personal grudges.
There were ecclesiastical politics. There were many things that sadden us when we read the stories of these councils. But in the weakness of men, the Spirit of God moved. and in that second council they reaffirmed the full manhood humanity of the Lord Jesus you would think well now that surely will settle the problem as to who Jesus Christ is very gone of very gone and also born of Mary the Virgin an authentic human being but that did not settle the problem for the historians came on the scene and they emphasized both of these points to the degree where they actually separated and you have two concepts the divine and the human two personalities and for the third time the leaders of the church got together and one of the major issues in that third ecumenical council was the single personality of the Lord Jesus.
And they went back to the Scriptures, and they reaffirmed He is not two people, two personalities. He is one single personality. No wonder Paul wrote the words, Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. And before I leave that subject of history, there was a fourth council convened And in the Fourth Council, which was held at Chalcedon, you have, I think, the greatest expression outside of the Bible that deals with the mystery of the doctrine of Christ. And there they reaffirmed his deity, his humanity, his single personality, and the twofold nature, divine and human.
Now that takes us away back to the Fourth Council. and the fifth century. But as I mentioned when we began tonight, it did rock the church to its foundation. For there were many different views about who the Lord Jesus is. It might be wise to pause right here and remember the words of the Lord Jesus. For he said, No one knows the Son but the Father. So we stand back in awe And remember that in the Bible, we are not told the full story of the glory of Christ, but we have been given the revelation of His deity, His humanity, His single personality, and the twofold nature, and we bow and worship.
And we should not, and dare not, try to press on beyond what has been revealed. Now, in our times, things are not much different. If you were to go out tonight into any shopping mall in Gainesville and stop ten people at random and talk to each one separately and say to each one, tell me, what is your opinion of Jesus Christ? Who do you think he really is? You would probably come back to the chapel and you would tell us, I got ten different ideas tonight about who the Lord Jesus is. We came into your community on Saturday, and as we drove in, we saw two handsome young men on bicycles with white shirts, dark trousers, and a dark tie and a little badge on their shirt.
You've seen them many times. If you ask them who the Lord Jesus is, they will tell you he is a prophet. but they have in their ecclesiastical bodies greater prophets than Jesus. You'll see others who stand sometimes with a little paper in their hand, and I speak gently and kindly tonight, and if you go up and they are knowledgeable, and you ask them their opinion of the Lord Jesus, you will find that they are modern preachers of Arianism. They too believe. that the verb, pardon me, that the word once did not exist, that Christ had a beginning.
So in our world where we live today, we have to come to a verse like this and try and find out what Paul meant when he said that the foundation is Jesus Christ. For he went into a pagan city, he had a very simple, basic message. We noticed it last night. This Jesus, whom I preach to you, is the Christ, the Messiah sent by God, who suffered and died for our sins. And he preached this message, and it revolved around the person called Jesus Christ. Now let's look at the context where we find the words and see what Paul tells us about this subject.
Chapter two and verse two of First Corinthians. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ. There's the term again, and him crucified. Now anyone who listened to Paul in Corinth, talking about someone called Jesus Christ, who was crucified, would never for a moment raise the question of his humanity. You cannot crucify a phantom. You cannot crucify a spirit. You must have a person made up of flesh and of bones and of blood.
A human being is the only thing that can be crucified in our human experience. And people in Corinth and in Rome and all around the Mediterranean, they had lived with crucifixion. It was the common way to do away with criminals and the unwanted. It's interesting that in the literature of two thousand years ago, the Latin literature of the Romans, they only rarely ever write about crucifixion. Not because it didn't exist. You couldn't move without seeing the crosses outside of the towns and villages, often with bodies hanging on them.
It was a reality... But it seems that the people in the world of literature just erased it from their mind, and they lived as if it did not exist. If you read quietly someday John's Gospel, chapter nineteen, you'll find one of the greatest testimonies in the Bible to the authentic humanity of the Lord Jesus. As you read the details of the crucifixion, how he suffered, We live in a society today where a man pulls out a gun and he shoots. It happens in a moment. It's violence, but you're alive and then you're dead.
Crucifixion is not like that. It can linger for a long time. It is a slow, painful, cruel, ugly death. And Paul is talking about someone who was crucified. Thus there is absolutely no doubt that he is talking about a human being. His name was Jesus when he was here in the world, and now in the Christian community they blend the name Jesus with the term Messiah, Christ, and they refer to him as Jesus Christ. But the person that Paul is talking about is not merely a human being.
Let's go down in this chapter. We'll start at verse two, just pardon me, verse one of chapter two. And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom. You'll find the word wisdom a number of times. You have to qualify each time what it refers to here. It is human wisdom. I did not come with excellence of speech or of human wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. That's the phrase. It's a beautiful phrase. The witness or the testimony of God.
There is some message. There is something in God that comes out, and Paul is talking about the testimony of God. what god wants to do what is in his mind what he is working towards and it's the testimony of god now if we move down to verse seven of the same chapter we read but we speak the wisdom of god in a mystery the hidden wisdom which god ordained before the ages for our glory just an illustration before we look at the verse about two years ago we were drawing near to our fortieth wedding anniversary my wife will excuse me for talking about this tonight but in my own heart for some time I thought about that date I realized we were still in very good health both of us And I wondered what I could do on our fortieth wedding anniversary to say to
my wife, thank you for all that you've put up with down through forty years in the Dominican Republic and in many and varied experiences, and my mind began to work. Now here you read about the wisdom of God. If we think of God in the sense of mind and heart and intellect, God is thinking. This is the wisdom of God. His mind is functioning. In my own case, thinking about grace, I thought I would like to take her back to Scotland, where she still has relatives. She went there when she was ten years of age.
She'd never been back. The relatives were children as she was when they were together about fifty years ago, and it was time for her to go back, and that was a plan. Of course, grace did not know anything about it. So it was hidden wisdom. It was in my mind. It had not yet been revealed. For that reason, from the point of view of grace, who didn't even know about it, it was a secret. Something she wasn't aware of, had no knowledge of. It was in my mind. Now we have to grapple tonight with the thought of the transcendent and eternal gospel.
In the verse right down at the end, you have a very important phrase which reads, Before the Ages. I suggest to you it is a synonymous phrase for the other phrase which Paul uses, Before the Foundation of the World. Age is a special word. In plural, it takes you way back before there is time, before there is creation, cosmos. God in his mind is thinking and he is planning. This is hidden in his heart, even after creation, even after the beginning of the human race.
It is not immediately revealed. In the Old Testament, you have promises given. you have little glimpses, but it is still in its major part hidden in the heart of God. Now Paul tells us, he went to Corinth to talk about the testimony of God, which springs out of the wisdom of God. It had been hidden in his heart, and thus it was a secret or a mystery to human beings in general. but now the time has come to talk about it and to reveal it and I suppose marvel of all marvels right down at the end of this verse verse seven you find that all of these thoughts and longings and plans of God are designed towards our glory it's unbelievable you look around the world today And you think of the world in which we live, the whores that we've seen recently because of the war.
We hear a famine again in Africa. Some of us have forgotten about the tragedies of Indochina, the economic difficulties in Latin America, all of the problems of our humanity. Then if you just shut it all out for a moment and look into your own heart, What you are like is a human being. And try and conceive that before all time God was thinking about the human race. He was thinking about us. He was thinking of what he wanted to do for human beings.
And the whole plan moves towards the destiny of glory. It is for our glory. Now Paul is the great exponent of this testimony of God, this wisdom of God in the New Testament. But he tells us in verse eight, and it must be one of the great tragic verses of the New Testament, which none, the word which, this testimony of God, this hidden wisdom of God, this purpose of God, which none of the rulers of this age knew. for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory now this last term in the minds of many Bible scholars is perhaps the highest title given to the Lord Jesus in the New Testament the Lord of glory if you take that term all by itself and take it right out of its context Well, you might have a great debate about who is the Lord of Glory.
And you may come up with different ideas, some of them based in the Old Testament, but you can't do that. Because Paul links the term, the Lord of Glory, to the verb crucify. And he says, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. Now back to verse two. for i determined not to know anything among you except jesus christ and him crucified so we are dealing with the same person the man called jesus whom paul says is the messiah and who was taken by evil men and with wicked hands was put to death outside of jerusalem paul says he is the Lord of glory.
Now the term Lord, we mentioned this on Sunday morning, is the Greek word keros. It is the word that the Jewish translators in Alexandria decided to use as the equivalent for Jehovah from the Old Testament. This term takes you right back into the Old Testament. It takes you back to the eternal and transcendent God. who in the Old Testament is called the God of glory. So this man who appeared in our world so long ago by the name of Jesus and who was crucified outside of Jerusalem, Paul says the rulers of this age, Pilate, Caiaphas, Ananias, all of the rulers and the representatives of that age would never have put him to death.
if they had known the secret thoughts of God, that they were all centered in the Lord Jesus, who was the agent who would bring God's plan to fulfillment and take many sons unto glory. But they crucified the Lord of glory. The glory is God's glory, and many would suggest behind it is the thought of the Shekinah glory in the Old Testament. when God came down and dwelt among his people and his glory was there. This is the Lord from heaven. To use another phrase of Paul's, this is the Lord of glory.
So when Paul says in Corinth, I laid a foundation, and this foundation is Jesus Christ, he is talking about a man who at the same time is very God, a very God. Now turn with me to chapter fifteen of first Corinthians as we conclude this evening and notice some of the things that Paul tells us about the Lord Jesus, for he not only spoke of his person, but he spoke about his death. Now when you read the verses tonight that we're going to look at together, I'm going to suggest to you that you have one of the earliest creeds of the Christian church.
Many are sure that this did form a very basic saying in the early church. You know, tonight we all come to the service with our Bibles. In my own library at home, I probably have somewhere near thirty or forty different translations in Spanish and in English and in Greek. We have Bibles all round about us today. It wasn't like that in the primitive church. They did not have Bibles. They did not even have manuscripts of the Old Testament. Only a very affluent Jew might have enough money to get his own manuscript, and then it would only be a part of the Old Testament.
Then you also have the problem that many did not know how to read or write. So you find that it was the habit as it still is in primitive societies, to memorize things. And you memorize certain verses or saying, and in that way you capture the truth that is being shared with you. Now it has been suggested by many that here you have one of these early, simple, concise statements of the Christian faith. It consists of four lines, and each line begins with the word that. Now let's look down at verse three of first Corinthians fifteen.
For I deliver to you first of all that which I also receive. Now those are two key verbs. They are what you might call a pair of verbs that are often together. It certainly describes the history of the Christian church. I have been invited to spend this week with you. Because when I was a boy in Burnaby, British Columbia, in the Central Park Gospel Hall, there were men and women who delivered to me by their teaching and by their lives what they in turn had received from others.
We have had the privilege in the Dominican Republic having received to deliver to our Dominican colleagues who in turn, having received, have moved on to share the good message with others. Now when you think of Paul, Paul says, That which I received. Where did Paul receive the message? Well, it's a little complicated because Paul writes about it in different ways. We do know that he went up to Jerusalem and he spent two weeks with Peter and James. And it must have been two glorious weeks. I can imagine all the questions that Paul would ask.
These men had known the Lord Jesus. They had walked with him, talked with him. They'd spend a lot of time with him. And I can imagine Paul asking questions and questions, and they would tell him all the things they remembered and that they knew about the Lord Jesus. but i also know that paul received directly from the lord so he definitely received from the lord through the apostles in part the great knowledge of the christian truth he had received it then he went to the city of corn and he delivered this message about christ to the people of that city and the message is summarized in the following way verse three the second phrase, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.
When we followed Paul into Thessalonica and into Berea and even into Corinth, he went to the synagogue in each place. And there they would bring out from the curtains behind the reading desk in a very simple ceremony. They would walk up the leaders of the synagogue they would open the curtains take out the roll for the reading that day and they would put it on the on the pulpit and then the chosen instrument would read after he read the portion then the session was opened and others could participate and make comments and that of course is when Paul would stand up and he would begin to speak about Jesus who is the Christ and all that he said in his message he took from the scriptures which had been read in the synagogue.
In Berea, you can see the old men coming up afterwards and standing round about the reading desk and going to the roll and finding out it's just exactly the way he sent. And one of the primary thoughts was that the Messiah must suffer and die. I can imagine him gleaning from Isaiah fifty-three from the story of the Passover from many parts of the Old Testament, and he brought into focus that the reason why Christ died was for our sins. That was a fundamental part of the message he preached in Corinth.
He's telling them, now, don't you remember? When I came, you didn't even know me. You may have seen me on the street corner or heard me first of all in the synagogue or then in the house that belonged to justice. And you heard me telling you that Christ died for our sins. It has to be emphasized not only in the city of Corinth, which under the shadow of Athens was also filled with philosophy. It must be emphasized in our world today. Jesus is not just an example. He is not just someone who taught us how to dance.
He was not just a good man who was put to death and thus became a martyr. The message of the Gospel is that we are all sinners and that Christ died for our sins. I think as I grow older and looking at the audience tonight, we identify more and more with a great preacher, Spurgeon, of whom it was said that on his deathbed he said, All his theology was reduced to three words, that Jesus died for me. That's the message. That was part of the foundation that Paul put in Corinth, and that was part of the message of the Old Testament.
It was according to the Scriptures. Now the second line, also in this portion, in verse four, and that he was buried. we may not ourselves at first glance get the importance of the why would that be put in that he was bearing well it was very important even in our generation there have been books written and published that have widely circulated that still maintain that jesus did not really die that he fainted and then as the body lay in the cool tomb he was revived and he came back out again after two thousand years there are those who are still trying to promote that thought Paul wants to make it crystal clear Jesus really and truly died he was buried you know we have heard this since our childhood maybe we have got over sometimes the wonder of this but we are talking about a man who died through crucifixion, this horrible,
ugly, cruel death. His body was taken down, and then it was placed in a tomb, for he had really and truly died. Some of you may have gone last year to Germany, or you may have gone ten years before that, and saw the great passion play that is put on once every ten years. If you have ever seen it, perhaps for the first time, you had just a shudder as you thought of what crucifixion is all about. Well, he died, and he was buried. You ask me, what is the importance of that?
You cannot have a resurrection unless there has really taken place death and burial. So you come to the third line. this great glorious truth of the Christian faith. And you read in verse four that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Now this was the message that caused the mockery in the city of Athens. They laughed Paul. They scoffed Paul when he began to talk about the resurrection. This was the message which in the church at Corinth had been weakened. And there were people saying, the dead don't really rise again.
That's one of the major reasons why Paul wrote this letter. And he's going to tell us in chapter fifteen, if the dead do not rise, then Christ did not rise from the dead. And if Christ did not rise from the dead, then our faith is in vain. We are of all men the most miserable. But he says Christ has risen from the dead. That is part of the foundation that was placed in the city of Corinth. And then finally, you read at the end of that verse, verse four, pardon me, verse five, and that he was seen by Cephas, Peter, by the twelve, by over five hundred, by James, and last of all, he was also seen by the Apostle Paul, child born out of time, but he really saw the risen and glorified Christ.
So His person and His work, that formed a foundation on which the church was built in the city of Corinth. As we close now tonight, we represent many different churches in our world today. Some of you come from the north, we come from the south. Some of you belong to this congregation. We must never be in an attitude of ease when it comes to the foundation of the church to make sure of our allegiance and loyalty to the Lord Jesus and our understanding of his message, the gospel, the good news.
And then as we understand it, to do what Paul did in the city of Corinth, even in your weakness, even when you're fearful, Even when you don't know how to express yourself the way you would like to, to have that courage which comes from the Spirit of God to open your mouth and to speak about the Lord Jesus and about the gospel. Because when we do that, then we may, in the Spirit's power, also lay foundations in lives and families, maybe even in a local church, something that will be for the glory of God. Let's take our hymn book as we conclude our service tonight and sing hymn number twenty.
Hymn number twenty, a beautiful hymn. Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, O thou of God and man the Son, thee will I cherish, thee will I honor, thou my soul's glory, joy, and crown. Let's stand to sing hymn number twenty. Farish for Jesus, ruler of all nature, over us, and blessed us.
Thank you. She on this earth will take the whole heart to me.
And now may blessings and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever. Amen. You may be seated.